At these words the remains of the gallant band of 400 recommenced the combat with irresistible energy. They fell on the Anabaptists with such vehemence that they drove them back on all sides; they gave no quarter, but breaking into divisions, swept the streets, meeting now with only a feeble resistance, for the soldiers without were battering at the gates. In vain did the sectarians offer to leave the town, their offer came too late, and the little band drove them from one rallying point to another.[265] [265] Kerssenbroeck, pp. 188, 189. Rottmann, feeling that all was lost, cast himself on their lances and fell. John of Leyden, instead of heading his party, attempted to fly, but was recognised as he was escaping through the gate of St. Giles, and was thrown into chains. In the meantime the reinforcement had mounted the walls, beaten in the gates, and was pouring up the streets, rolling back the waves of discomfited Anabaptists on the swords and spears of the decimated 400. Two hundred of the most determined among the fanatics entrenched themselves in a round tower commanding the market-place, and continued firing on the soldiers of the prince. The generals, seeing that the town was in their power, and that it would cost an expenditure of time and life to reduce those in the tower, offered them their life, and permission to march out of Münster unmolested if they would surrender. On these terms the Anabaptists in the bastion laid down their arms. The besiegers now spread throughout the city, hunting out and killing the rebels. Hermann Tilbeck, the former burgomaster, who had played into the hands of the Anabaptists till he declared himself, and who had been one of the twelve elders of Israel, was found concealed, half submerged, in a privy, near the gate of St. Giles, was killed, and his body left where he had hidden, "thus being buried," says Kerssenbroeck, "with worse than the burial of an ass." When the butchery was over, the bodies were brought together into the cathedral square and were examined. That of Knipperdolling was not amongst them. He was, in fact, hiding in the house of Catherine Hobbels, a zealous Anabaptist; she kept him in safety the whole of the 26th, but finding that every house was being searched, and fearing lest she should suffer for having sheltered him, she ordered him to leave and attempt an escape over the walls.[266] [266] Kerssenbroeck, p. 195.